By Chinenye Anuforo
Today, you can transfer data or files from one computer or phone to another. You cannot work in isolation in this interconnected world. For this reason, it is important for individuals and businesses to look for security solutions that make gathering and sharing data across borders and seas secure for them. In simple terms, this means securing the transfer of sensitive or confidential data online. There are many ways to ensure this. Additionally, there are some tools that can assist the secure transfer of data including a data transfer converter.
How can you ensure that the data you share is viewed by only the people who have your consent to see it? Contrary to popular belief, a strong password won’t be enough to ensure this. You will need to do a lot more. There are many options you can try to secure the data transfer of your sensitive or confidential data online. To secure the transfer of data, you can also combine these options and use a hybrid solution for securing data transfer.
Whether you use a specific method or combine the methods for a hybrid solution, a tool that you will find extremely useful is a data transfer converter. So, what are the methods to secure the transmission of sensitive or confidential data? Let’s find out.
Email encryption
A range of easy to use products that encrypt emails and ensure the safe transfer of private data including email-attachment are offered by many vendors today. The same encryption method can be used by the recipient as well. Mostly web-based, these products work by sending a link to the recipient. The recipient logs on to a safe email-server after clicking on the link. This allows the recipient to securely view the email and any attachments.
Additionally, he/she can send a secure response which includes attachments. The server is either owned by an organization or outsourced to an appropriate vendor. After you have performed email encryption to secure the transfer of data, you may want to use a data transfer converter to find out how much data has been transferred securely.
Use Dropbox
Another way for you to secure the transfer of confidential or sensitive data is using Dropbox. If you use Dropbox, then this is something you probably already know: to make downloading a file or folder possible for other people, users of Dropbox can generate a download link by clicking the ‘Share’ button next to a folder or file. Using Dropbox to transfer data securely is best when you want to share large files or files that are too large to send via email.
On Dropbox, the data can be accessed by only those people who have the download link. Additionally, the person who generates the link can download it at any time he/she wants. Users of Dropbox can get more options to secure data if they sign up for the pro account of Dropbox. The options available to such Dropbox users include setting a link expiry date and password protecting individual files and folders. To further enhance the security of your data transfer, use a data transfer converter.
Website encryption
This method of securing data transfer is for businesses. A business must secure its website it collects and transmits sensitive data to customers via the web. Using a securing socket layers (SSL) to encrypt the data transferred through a website is the general practice. In the website’s lower right hand corner, you will see an open or closed lock as soon as you open an internet browser.
The data transferred over the website is secure if the lock is closed. Generally, SSL secures this data. Eliminating the possibility of a hacker accessing it, the securing of data by SSL allows the collection and transfer of private data over a web site. While completely eliminating the security risks is not possible, you can significantly minimize the risk of data being inappropriately impeded by using SSL and secure web sites to transfer data.
There are two different ways to establish secure web sites—work with a vendor with the expertise of creating secure web presence or using internal programmers/analysts. Regardless of what you choose to go for, a tool that you will find extremely helpful in your endeavors is a data transfer converter.
FTP and SFTP
A standard network protocol, FTP or File Transfer Protocol copies a file from one host to another online. One of the best ways to automatically transfer data over the internet is secure FTP or SFTP. Extremely secure methods, both FTP and SFTP will transfer data only after you enter the relevant username and password. Now, you may be wondering what an SFTP is. Well, here is the answer.
An acronym for Secure File Transfer Protocol, SFTP is a SSH protocol extension used for the specific purpose of transmitting files. Access to a server is required to make use of SFTP. You can either buy the server or rent it. Once you have the server in place, you will be given a username and password which can be used to connect and download or upload files. To allow you to easily transfer, edit and copy files onto the server, the majority of the operating systems incorporate FTP into the file explorer.
Before your upload them, consider protecting the files stored on the server with a password. This is important because the connection is encrypted but the files on the server are not. In addition to password protecting the files on the server, consider using a data transfer converter.
PGP and GPG
Programs that securely transfer files by using public key cryptography, GPG and PGP help avoid the trouble of having to send a person an encrypted file’s password by encrypting files with a ‘public’ key and decrypting them with a ‘private key’. While the private key stays in your computer, your public key can be accessed by anyone to transfer files. If you are not too the savvy, then setting this up can be a bit of a problem for you.
Installing Mozilla Thunderbird, the cross-platform email client, and then using Enigmail, a free add-on and a useful set up wizard is probably the easiest way to do the above. Once you are done doing this, you can determine the encrypted data that has been transferred by using a data transfer converter.
HTTP
Typically used for transmitting hypertext files between a browser and a web server, HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol makes it possible to transfer documents using PUT and GET commands. The default setting of HTTP does not allow it to perform any sort of user authentication or data encryption. For this, the only thing HTTP should be used for is transferring documents categorized as University or Public Internal. Additionally, an HTTP webpage should never be used to validate passphrases or passwords.
Using TLS or Transport Layer Security, you can add Encryption-in-transit to HTTP, securing it for some implementations. Often referred to as HTTPs, this coming together of protocols is assisted by the majority of the web servers. Generally, the server end’s authentication is the only thing HTTPs provide and the purpose of this is to allow the server to use an authentication service or unequivocally validate the client. You can further enhance this method of securing the transfer of sensitive or confidential data by using a data transfer converter.